


Hands On

by CmonCmon



Series: Raising Warriors [14]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Clone Mom and Clone Dad, F/M, Lightsabers, Rancor Battalion, Rancor Feels, Soft Wars, Sparring, Star Wars AU - Soft Wars, Vau had it coming
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-03
Updated: 2020-09-03
Packaged: 2021-03-07 02:22:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,470
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26259358
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CmonCmon/pseuds/CmonCmon
Summary: Colt and Walon Vau face off for 'educational purposes'
Relationships: Colt (Star Wars)/Shaak Ti
Series: Raising Warriors [14]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1835518
Comments: 41
Kudos: 268
Collections: Open Source Soft Wars





	Hands On

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Project0506](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Project0506/gifts), [Primarybufferpanel (ArwenLune)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ArwenLune/gifts).



> Sorry for the delay, I was on vacation!
> 
> There are shades of Edee Squad feels in here, so be warned. 
> 
> Go read Project0506's [Soft Wars](https://archiveofourown.org/series/1683775) series!
> 
> Thanks to PrimaryBufferPanel and Jac (with the secret AO3) for being so much help with this and all the other parts in this series!

Colt would be lying if he said he hadn’t been waiting for this moment. Even only mostly recovered, he was up to this. Wanted this. 

Yes, he was still sore and he’d likely be aching something fierce for the effort but this had always been inevitable. 

He dragged the back of his hand over his face to clear the blood and squared again.

Contrary to the beliefs of his men, Colt didn’t hate every single trainer. A few of them were even the sort he’d willingly fight beside. But every Gilamar or Rau, there were ten he considered unfit for the job of training his brothers.

Colt didn’t hate often, but some of the trainers made it easy. If he believed Davin of Priest would have the gett’se to face a soldier instead of a cadet, Colt would take the first available opening. 

Vau, however.

Vau gave his cadets the choice - fight each other or fight him. Colt _suggested_ an alternative.

For educational purposes. 

Colt had been learning things too, like the fact that Vau hit like a speeder even in an ‘instructional’ ‘spar.’ Oh, Colt had heard him tell his cadets that it would make them stronger in the end. That was the same lies they all told.

He knew better. Colt had been out there, survived some of the bloodiest battles the GAR had fought, and dragged every brother he could through with him. He hadn’t needed Alpha-6 to leave him bloody on a mat to learn that. None of his brothers were better for the suffering they had had no choice but to endure, whatever they might choose to believe as fully grown troopers. Living to see another battle wasn’t some reward for being an obedient cadet.

Vau came forward again, and Colt rolled with it, one arm up protectively over his recovering side. The trainer wanted a show, wanted his cadets to be impressed, so he was looking for high value strikes, and that meant going for the injured side. 

Colt lured him in, backing a step, offering the left shoulder, left arm, but not more. Vau’s strikes were enough to rattle bones. The last time he’d walked away from a spar with bruises like these, he’d been ARC-training The karking Marine.

Vau committed, strike to the right to force Colt to drop his block, but he twisted away which brought another kind of ache to his bad side, and Vau went openly for the left side. 

He only had reach of his right. Closing in on his left was a mistake, but Vau wanted the win. 

Colt didn’t want the win. 

Knee to the gut to stop the momentum, heel to the back of the knee to bring him down, elbow to the jaw as he fell.

To his credit, Vau didn’t stop, landing one good hit on his chest as he fell. Colt staggered back a step, but Vau hit the mat gasping, blood welling at the side of his mouth.

Colt didn’t want to win. He only wanted to show Vau’s cadets their trainer was only human.

“General.” Tals did not have a subtle bone in his body, but Colt was grateful for the warning. Vau was still getting to his feet, and unlike Colt, did not have to show appropriate deference. 

Vau could behave to his own standards. Colt turned his back on his opponent to stand at attention out of respect for his General.

His General who looked like she would happily send him back to Pots for the talking to he was most certainly due for.

“Commander, have you been cleared to resume contact activity?” Her tone made it crystal clear she knew he had not been. If they had been Colt and Shaak at that moment, he would have apologized to her, but they were a Commander facing his General.

“No, sir.” At least his throat had healed more quickly than his chest. The words came out sure and crisp.

“As you were,” Shaak said as she passed Tals and the cadets to stand at the edge of the sparring mat. “Then perhaps you can explain this?”

“Trainer Vau and the cadets were having a strategic discussion.” Colt wet his lips and tasted blood. He was a mess. “I offered to help test the theory, sir.” Colt glanced back over his shoulder. Vau gave him one slow smirk, a clear reminder that he could have taken the cheap shot if he was a lesser man.

“They need to know you don’t win a fight by going easy on your opponent.” Vau looked over the line of his Commando cadets before wiping at the blood at the corner of his mouth.

“Was someone ‘going easy’ on you, Walon?” Shaak asked with perfect calm, and Colt could have kissed her on the spot.

“I was demonstrating the value of patience in combat, sir.” Colt wiped at his still-bloody nose to hide his smile.

“You don’t need patience in combat if you have the skills,” Vau snapped and Colt saw the cadets flinch. 

“Unless you’re outnumbered, or at a disadvantage,” Colt snapped back, squaring to the trainer, “Or injured.” 

Vau’s jaw tightened like he would crack his teeth. 

Before he knew how it happened, Shaak was between them, a hand on Colt’s arm. “Perhaps I would like to participate in the demonstration. The Commander is not cleared for sparring.”

“You?” The sneer on Vau’s face tempted Colt to throw the _demonstration_ into the ocean and knock the trainer’s teeth in.

The General cocked her head and waited. 

Colt had learned to read it as an openly questioning _no?_

Vau snorted. “What good is it if you use _Jetii_ tricks?”

“Tricks?” She paused. “Commander, if you don’t mind?” Shaak unclipped her lightsaber from her belt and held it out to Colt. “The Jedi train without the Force as well as with it.”

He had never touched her lightsaber. Never considered touching one before. And yet, Shaak held it out like it would only be natural for him to guard it for her. He took it, moving off the mat a bit more gingerly than he would want to admit. The cadets looked between him and where Shaak and Vau stood barely an arms’ reach apart. 

Colt smiled to reassure the cadets. He had every confidence in his General.

He fit himself next to Tals, shoulders against the wall, and turned Shaak’s lightsaber over in his hands. It felt good in his hands, a solid weight for such a delicate weapon. From the stories he’d heard, Colt was still sorry to miss seeing the General in action during the attack.

“You good?” Tals leaned a shoulder into Colt’s. 

He hurt. Colt could feel the bruises darkening, and to risk his reinjury had been just the kind of stupid 99 had accused him of being. “Better than good.” Colt kept his eyes on the sparring mat and nodded. “Left a mark or two on that shabajur.”

Tals roughed Colt’s sweaty hair and the two fell silent, attention on their General.

Shaak didn’t bother to remove her robes. Colt worried at the extra handholds she was allowing Vau, but unlike the trainer, he had sparred with her. If she believed she was ready to face the shabuir, Colt knew she was.

Without a staff in her hand, Shaak stood almost too casually. Most of her form was hidden in her robes, her arms loose at her sides. 

Vau went straight for a grab. His longer reach and heavier frame was the logic behind it, but it made the complete lack of respect for his opponent more obvious. Shaak dodged with a spin, robes swirling around her like she was dancing. 

No quick win for Vau. No show of his superior prowess for his cadets to remember. 

In keeping with the rules of the supposed demonstration, Shaak didn’t follow with an attack, only moved gracefully into the reset. 

This time it was a strike, a simple opening to engage. Shaak met it with a block instead of a dodge. The next flurry was a thing of beauty, a streak of blocks and counters as Shaak snaked through attacks and wound herself around the mat. Never off balance, never out of position. 

At some point, Colt realized he was breathless. 

Vau finally got a hand on her, catching her arm to yank her to the mat, to use his weight advantage to grapple. Instead, Shaak unwound herself from his grip, leaving him holding her robes.

“Kandosii'la.” The praise was whispered low and adoring. Colt wasn’t sure if he’d said it aloud or Tals. Even if nothing had happened since their talk in her quarters, Colt’s feelings seemed to grow every time he saw her.

Vau pitched the robe to the edge of the mat in disgust. “Tricks.”

Shaak held her hands out, questioning. “No tricks.”

“You’re not even fighting,” he spit the words at her. 

Shaak considered. “I am not?” She glanced over to Colt, eyes sparkling. “Was that not the premise of the lesson? That I was to demonstrate a defensive role?”

“I did hit him once or twice, sir.” Kark him, Colt could barely pretend to be indifferent.

“Ah,” Shaak agreed, turning back to Vau. “Then I will strike you next time you are vulnerable.”

Like he was asking for her to do it. Like next time was a when, not an if. She was magnificent. 

“Again,” Vau barked at her like she was a cadet and not a General. Colt was unaware he’d taken a step forward until Tals put a hand on his arm. 

She had this, every vod in the room knew it. Colt eased himself back against the wall.

Vau moved more cautiously, but pure offense. He moved like he wanted to hurt someone. Colt knew the look. Colt wasn’t proud of it, but he hadn’t been different in their last round.

After a few barely-missed attempts to engage, Vau landed a solid strike to the General’s shoulder. Would have been the center of her chest but she’d rocked with the motion at the last moment, and the hit landed with a solid impact. Colt’s hand fisted more tightly about her lightsaber until he willed himself to release the grip. He knew what they could do to a vod who wasn’t careful.

If the strike was more than she expected, Shaak didn’t let on. She barely paused, bringing her arms under his reach, landing the heel of her hand into his stomach and a heel to the back of his knee.

Just like Colt had. 

She’d copied his sequence. She’d watched him that closely. The ache in Colt’s chest was not the kind that responded to bacta. 

Vau went down to a knee again, but Shaak didn’t follow with the elbow like Colt had. Because she was a better person than he was. She had the collar of Vau’s shirt knotted in her fist, other arm pulled back to strike. But she didn’t. She held.

“Well?” Vau glared at her. “Don’t have the guts to do it?”

Shaak stood poised to strike, Vau below her, like a vengeful goddess. 

“What would you learn that you have not already, if I did?” She asked in that perfect, beautiful calm.

She hadn’t challenged him for the satisfaction of punching him in the face under the pretense of helping his cadets. She’d challenged him to show him he was lesser because he needed to hurt them to prove he was teaching.

Vau pushed her away, climbing to his feet. Colt shook off Tals’ hand to come to stand beside her. Shaak had allowed Vau to take his feet. Colt knew she had the leverage to hold him there if she’d chosen. 

The trainer glared at both of them. “Oh I have learned.” 

“And that is a joy of teaching, isn’t it?” Shaak called her robes to her hand, the most casual show that he had been bested by only one of her weapons. Vau’s cadets left for their next lesson, the man himself stalked off. “Commander, a word.”

“Sir.” He followed her off the mat. Colt nodded once to Tals and the trooper got the hint, leaving just the two of them in the room.

“It was foolish and irresponsible of you to be goaded into fighting Vau.” She was angrier at him than she had appeared at any moment facing Vau. For all the times he’d deserved it, she’d never disciplined him before. Shaak had always been better at moving between their professional and personal relationships, so Colt kept those concerns to himself.

“Yes, sir. It was.” Colt knew she was right, but that didn’t mean he hadn’t had to do it.

She gestured at his chest. “You are not even fully healed.” 

“No, sir. Not there yet.” And when he thought about it, it ached extra to remind him.

“And yet?” 

“Vau allows his cadets a choice, sir.” Colt refused to let himself look away. “Fight one another, or fight him. He put one in a tank for a month. If I get the choice, I’d rather he fight me. Sir.”

“And the next time you are not in the room?” Shaak asked, in that infuriating Jedi calm. “Or after you’ve been reassigned?” 

Or decommissioned, she was kind enough not to say. Colt knew he was not protected under the changes she’d made for the cadets. “I can’t allow it to happen, sir. I can’t stand by and let him hurt them.” 

He’d allowed it when he was a cadet, when he felt too powerless to change it. He couldn’t allow it to keep happening.

“I know you can’t.” Her hand came up and rested so gently on his shoulder. “But we must find a better way. You protect many more of your brothers as the Commander of Rancor Battalion than you will as the man who would die for them.”

Colt’s eyes slipped closed. He knew she was right, and it still hurt. “There has to be a better way.”

“And when we find it?” Her hand slipped to his shoulder, resting over the black ink of the upturned Rancor claws. “We will take it. Until then, we will do our best.”

Colt forced his eyes open, needing to see that she meant it. Wanting to reach out to her, but knowing he couldn’t.

Shaak nodded like she’d heard his thoughts. Maybe she had.

“Yes, sir.” Emotion was knotted in his chest, forcing out the ache of his healing wounds.

“Good, thank you Commander.” Shaak let go of him. “You must take care of yourself to be able to help others. Please report to medical and let Pots scold you. He was very alarmed when Tals commed all of Rancor to let them know you were fighting Vau.”

“Yes, sir.”

_Karking Tals._

**Author's Note:**

> Do I have it out for Vau specifically? No, not really. He's another of a bunch of terrible trainers. I do think I spent a LOT of time dumping on (also terrible person) Cort Davin in other works, and Dred Priest n mentioned in later Soft Wars stories.... Good thing I had no trouble finding yet another terrible trainer to be angry at. Vau's entire character is a paper-thin excuse of 'he is really a good guy, he just shows it like this' and I am NOT here for that. 
> 
> Shoutout to Nibylandia who asked to see Shaak interact with the trainers. This is one sort of interacting...


End file.
